


the monster at the end of this book

by Kacka



Series: Kacka Does a Thing [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:50:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9272549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: prompt: assassin-Octavia from s4 gets her next hit: her brother.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. it was kind of weird to put myself in octavia’s mindset since i have such conflicting feelings about her, but i haven’t given up on her yet, so here we are. 
> 
> whoever sent this prompt in, thanks and i hope it’s what you wanted!

 

Hearing his name hurts Octavia more than hearing Lincoln’s.

Lincoln is easy to set apart in her mind, not tangled up in betrayal or disillusion. He’s always there with her, a glowing ember that she hides in the darkest parts of her soul, just as she used to hide herself away under the floor. If she lets him reveal himself to the rest of her, if she lets him be free, she can’t protect his memory from tarnishing in this awful reality.

But Bellamy is a creature of another kind. He’s always been more than a person to Octavia; he was what fifty people should have been: her friend, her teacher, her role model, her protector, her provider. Her ability to keep fed and keep breathing.

She also remembers a lot of times when he was not her knight in hand-me-down armor. 

Times before she understood why he would abandon her to the dark, to the stuffy air and the noise of the Ark’s engines rattling away. Times when he’d tell her tales of grand adventures, and all she could do was wonder why the heroes of his stories got to be free and prove themselves, and all she got was hiding and pretending not to exist. Times when she wanted to scream and pound her fists and demand that someone take notice of her before she disappeared like a comet burning up in the atmosphere.

And now even the good memories are tainted by what she knows he’s capable of. What he’s done, what he’s turned a blind eye to, what morals he’s willing to compromise.

Everything is his fault, in a way-- not just what happened to Lincoln, what happened to the people she was beginning to consider her own, but even before the ground. The guard catching her at that dance, her mother floating. Hell, she's even got residual resentment from every time she watched him walk out the door, the First Child who got to roam wherever he liked.

Her brother’s memory also glows, but the thought of him is tied inextricably to darkness too, and an anger that burns so hot she can hardly control it.

When Octavia is told to spill Bellamy’s blood, she’s knows the request is not one for justice, not for making a political statement, not for testing her abilities. It’s a test of the will of Octavia Blake, the girl this new version of Octavia, this S _kairipa_ , left trapped in the top of that tall tower, just like the damsels in Bellamy’s stories.

If there’s one thing that girl learned, it’s that this world is full of dragons, and sometimes the only way to be free is to become one.

* * *

Two days journeying toward skaikru territory is all it takes for Roan to intercept her.

He leaves his warriors a respectable distance away, dismounting from his horse and sauntering over as if they’d arranged a nice picnic together in the woods. As if he owns any land he walks on.

Octavia watches his approach with wary eyes, mentally taking stock of her weapons and her chances.

“What do you want?” 

He leans against a nearby tree, close enough she has to look up at him. She doesn’t move, doesn’t let it show that he has the upper hand.

“I have a request,” he says, easy as anything. His trigedasleng is more stilted than hers, she notes smugly.

“Get in line,” she snaps in English. Forcing him to her ground. “I’m busy.”

“Yes, you’ve been tasked to kill your brother, if I understand correctly.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “What do you care?”

“I don’t.” His tone is still neutral, giving nothing away. “But I have some things I need your council to agree to first, and Wanheda won’t be in a very agreeable mood if your brother is dead.”

“They’re not my council,” she says, a reflex.

He inclines his head. “All the same, I--”

“You don’t want me to kill him? I thought you didn’t like him.”

“He is useful to me for a few more days,” says Roan, looking very slightly disgruntled. She thinks it’s the interrupting that tipped him over the edge. “I am asking you to wait until I leave. After that, I don’t much care.” He pauses. “Also, they are likely to be on their guard while they are hosting us. Your task might be easier if you wait for the right moment.”

Octavia is silent for a long minute, letting him squirm, letting him wonder. He doesn’t appear to be doing either, standing perfectly passive, but she hopes that’s all happening on the inside.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll hold off until you leave, if you promise me a favor in the future.”

Roan nods again, deep and slow. “You have my word. You are, of course, welcome to join us for the journey. Traveling in a group means better hunting, more protection. It is why most of us prefer to join a kru.”

At this, Octavia’s blood runs cold. She’s tired of kicking down doors-- or floorboards, as it were. Tired of forcing a place where she isn’t wanted. From now on, she’ll carve her own place, wherever she damn well pleases.

She lifts her chin, pretending not to remember from whom she learned that expression of defiance.

“I am the S _kairipa_ ,” she tells him, her voice as sharp as her blade. “I don’t need anyone.”

* * *

Part of her wonders if it wouldn’t be easier to just knock on the front gate.

She waits for Roan and his groupies to leave as promised, the dragging of time making it impossible to escape her own mind. Impossible not to think about Lincoln, not to think about the last time she was here, not to feel the flames of her anger yearning to devour everything in sight. The only distraction available to her is to turn her plan continually over in her mind.

It would be simpler in some ways to announce her presence. They would invite her in, not noticing that she’s a wolf in Octavia Blake’s clothing. Bellamy would likely deliver himself straight to her. Easy as floating.

But if she does announce herself, she has to face _people_. To watch them pity her, or turn their noses up at what she’s become. She’d have to slog through conversations with Jasper or Harper or Monty, have to paste on her least threatening face for Kane and come up with an answer for the rumors they’ve heard.

No, she decides. She’ll sneak in during the dead of night, exactly as Kane showed her under Pike’s--

Under a different regime.

Not different enough.

The metal skeleton of the Ark looms eerily over the valley, the fortifications they’ve surrounded it with reminding her of another time when they were promised security and given a cage. Every inch of her skin crawls when she emerges within Arkadia’s confines, but she reminds herself that she is no longer the girl imprisoned here at the skaikru’s mercy.

She is justice. She is their reckoning. She’s not the despairing, helpless princess; she’s the monster of this story. She’s the dragon.

The dragon is hungry. The dragon wants to rage and burn, wants to raze the world to the ground, wants to inflict powerlessness and pain. The dragon remembers how it felt to be trapped and refuses to be chained again.

She knows exactly where he sleeps, knows exactly what passcode will open the doors for her (tries not to notice that the code is her birthday). It’s the easiest job she’s ever had, right up to the point where his door clanks on the slide, the sound jarring in the still of the night.

And damn him, Bellamy has always been a light sleeper (though she tries not to think about why he had to be; what sounds of danger or need he was so attuned to that he could be roused at the dropping of a sewing needle).

“O?” He whispers, barely turning toward her in the dark.

She should be able to deliver the killing blow without issue. His whole back is exposed to her, so much broader than before she went to the Skybox, his neck craned slightly but not enough to protect anything important. His arm is in no position to defend himself, wrapped around-- is that Clarke in his bed? Clarke, whose Alpha station upbringing allows her to sleep soundly despite the assassin in the room.

It ought to be a straightforward hit, but she wavers. It’s a surprise to herself, how she can’t bring herself to do the thing she’s been picturing for days. How she’s frozen long enough for him to turn over and sit up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

His heart is right there. His lungs. His spleen. So many fragile things, all that stands between her blade and his death, but she can’t make herself do it.

“Your hair is too long,” she says instead, keeping her distance.

“Thank you for that assessment.”

His tone is bone dry but he’s eyeing her as critically as she is, him. Checking for wounds and scars, trying to find his sister in the stranger standing before him.

“You here to kill me?” He asks, voice raspy.

“That’s your first question?”

“You wanted to talk about my _hair_. This seemed more pressing,” he says, looking pointedly at the blade in her hands. “Besides, I may have been tipped off.”

“Roan,” she guesses. He shrugs, maddening in his familiarity when she so desperately wants to distance herself.

“Can’t remember. I hear so many things these days.” She almost rolls her eyes. If anyone knows what it sounds like when Bellamy Blake lies, it’s her. She’s heard him bullshitting all her life. “I have to say, though: it is refreshing to hear about a threat on my life I can fight or face on my own terms. One that isn’t coming from--” he waves his hand vaguely. “--the entire earth.”

“How’s all that going?” She wonders, then regrets the question.

“Raven has some ideas. Other people do too, but hers are the best. We’re working on it.”

“We?” Octavia asks, letting her gaze fall on Clarke. Bellamy looks down too and shifts slightly, putting himself as much between them as he can. Always placing himself in the line of fire.

A bit of her she thought might be dead twinges at the memory of him doing that on her behalf. It’s strange to be on this side of it, to see his face instead of his back.

“Be glad Abby has been giving her meds to knock her out,” he says, running his fingers through his shaggy hair. “She sleeps with a gun under her pillow.”

Maybe the Princess doesn’t sleep so easy after all.

“Shoot first, ask later?”

“Can you blame her, after everything?”

“I blame her for a lot,” Octavia says harshly.

Bellamy simply looks at her, gaze even. “There’s plenty of blame to go around. She came back. She’s trying to make amends. That’s all any of us can do.”

Once, this might have been inspiring. Now it falls flat. Making amends won’t undo what has been done, won’t bring Lincoln back.

His words prod at the thoughts she keeps locked away, shut beneath her mental floorboards. The part of her that fears-- as freely and liberally as she places blame on the whole world-- that a portion of the blame might rightfully belong to her.

Those thoughts strain against the bars of their prison, and for the first time since she saw Bellamy again, she can feel her fire. Only this time, it feels not like a weapon she wields, but like a wall around her, closing in, suffocating, consuming.

It chokes her, throat tightening, and suddenly she’s back to being the girl beneath the floorboards. The girl who had to measure her breaths carefully, who had to make herself as small as possible, and then smaller still. The girl she promised herself she’d never be again.

“Amends aren’t enough,” she tells him, starting to back toward the door in her panic. “Go back to sleep, big brother. This was all just a dream.”

He doesn’t move, watching her retreat with a heavy gaze.

“Be safe,” he whispers, just as she slips out of sight. And that, at least, she knows he means.

* * *

Returning to admit she failed isn’t an option, so she sets off toward Azgeda to call in her favor with Roan. She thinks she could negotiate some measure of protection. After the stunt he pulled, he owes her big time.

She isn’t angry with Roan. At least, no angrier than she is with anyone else.

She had every chance to kill her brother, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Seeing him again, thinking of him so much in the past week, it’s plain to her that they’ve left their fingerprints all over each other’s lives. She’s not sure how to remedy that, except to retreat further into her new monstrous self.

All she’s certain of is that she can’t slip back into Octavia Blake’s skin when the beast inside feels so much bigger now. She fed it too much, let it get too greedy. To return to who she used to be, she’d have to cut away parts of herself that made her who she is.

She can’t go back, can’t move forward with this hit, doesn’t know which way her path is leading her.

 _I carve my own path,_ she reminds herself. _All I need is a little time._

* * *

“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” Abby says, for what feels like the fifteenth time in an hour.

“Thank you for pointing that out,” Raven snaps. “I didn’t actually realize the whole planet was a ticking time bomb and that I’m racing against the clock. It definitely helps to have you hovering.”

“You heard her,” Bellamy says, infusing as much authority as possible, though that’s never really worked on the Griffin women. “Everyone out.”

Abby opens her mouth to argue but Clarke stills her with a hand on her shoulder.

“We need to discuss the message we’re sending to the Flokru anyway,” she reminds her mother. “Let’s give her a little space to save all our asses.”

“I’m leaving Miller with you,” Bellamy tells Raven in a low voice, catching his friend’s eye across the room. “He knows how to keep his mouth shut and let you work, but you can send him if you need anything from us. And if you don’t show at lunch, I’m bringing you food.”

“Fine, _Mom_. Just get them off my back for a while.”

Bellamy nods at Raven, then at Miller, only catching Clarke’s eye when he exits the room.

“Miller is supposed to stay with _you_ ,” she scolds quietly.

They didn’t spread the news about Octavia around. The only reason Clarke knows at all is because Roan pulled both of them aside to relay the message. In Bellamy’s private opinion, Roan only gave him the heads up in the first place as a maneuver to stay on Clarke’s good side.

That keeping Bellamy alive would get someone on Clarke’s good side is a whole other thing to wrap his mind around.

“Put Harper on Raven if you really don’t want to tell anyone else about your sister,” Clarke suggests.

He looks side to side, making sure they’re alone in the hall. “I don’t need protecting.”

“Bellamy--”

“She already came and went.” Clarke’s mouth snaps shut, her hands fluttering toward him like she wants to check him over for injuries. He catches her wrists gently. “I’m fine. She didn’t make any kind of move to attack.”

“When?” Clarke asks, her voice urgent and serious. He squeezes her wrists reassuringly.

“About three a.m. You slept through it.”

Her face turns white. “You didn’t wake me?”

“Didn’t need to. We talked. I told her she could come home and she left instead. She’s not going to be back, at least not anytime soon.”

It doesn’t hurt as much to say those words as he thought it might. Seeing Octavia whole and unhurt-- physically, at least-- did him good, but seeing how raw she’d looked, the way her emotions smoldered beneath her skin, is an image he knows he won’t be able to get out of his head.

He still loves his sister. There are still very few boundaries he wouldn’t cross for her. 

But trying to make her stay against her will isn’t something he’s interested in. More than almost anything in the world, he wants her to _want_ to come home. He doesn’t know if that will happen before the apocalypse, but if he can buy her enough time to sort things out, that’s what he’s going to do.

Clarke softens. “You let her go. Again.”

Bellamy smiles ruefully, the barest uptick of his lips, thinking about how little he’d resisted. How many chances he’d given her, and how many chances she hadn’t taken.

“I’m not giving up,” he says, rearranging his hold on Clarke’s hands so he can pull her toward the council room. “There’s still hope for her. For all of us. But first, we’ve got a world to save.”

She grips hand hard, that steady pressure that reassures him she’s right there with him in every sense of the words.

“Okay,” she says, and he knows she means it because Clarke has never given ground he didn’t earn. “Let’s go save the world.”


End file.
